Prayer!! Need prayer!!!

Hello everyone!  Ok, here's the situation.  I felt like I was gonna pass out for the last 5 days or so.  I had just gotten an infection and was wondering if that was the reason, or if my blood was low.  The answer is yes.  Yes to both.  The infection apparently can take a toll on a chemo patient and can make you feel like death.  (Check...)

On a positive note, my hemoglobin levels were low, but not that low.  They met the minimum requirement of what is needed to proceed with chemo.  (they were at least 2 pints higher than what they were last time we had this little crisis)  HOWEVER... my platelets... my platelets are tanked even lower than last time.  The average range is between 130-400, and mine is registering at 52.  Yikes!!!  (Thank God I haven't had any nosebleeds again though or gotten any cuts, or I'm sure my hemoglobin would also be way low!)  The problem with this is that there is a minimum requirement for both hemoglobin and platelets in order to proceed with chemo for the week.  I DO NOT WANT TO MISS CHEMO AGAIN!!!  I do not want to put my ending date back ANOTHER week!!!!  The minimum that my platelets need to be in order to be deemed "healthy enough for chemo" is 80.  Please, please, please, please pray that my platelets would get up to the minimum within the next day and a half.  (Shoot!  Pray that they get up to the normal range!  Dream big, right?) I can't stress how much I don't want to delay another week.

I'm honestly not stressing all that much about it, because whenever I have put something out here for people to pray for, I have usually seen almost immediate results.  God is good, and He listens to the prayers of His people.  I feel ABSOLUTELY confident that He will do this.  However, even if He chooses not to, I praise the name of my God because He is good.  (say it with me!  "The Lord is good" "When?" "All the time")  I love the prayer of Job.  "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord".  Here's my song for the day.  For those of you who were at my wedding, this was the song that John and I walked out with, right after our big fantastic smooch.  Please forgive the graphics.  There's no way to get a Christian song without seriously cheesy graphics.  Just listen and read the lyrics and chuckle to yourself at the graphics:)

 (Blessed be the name of the Lord by Matthew Redman)

(Also, I want to give a shout out to some super awesome people who have been blessing me like crazy!  (Of course my parents) Thank you to my cousin Mary who actually canceled a work appointment to take me into the hospital last Thursday when I was feeling so sick.  Thanks to my other cousin Mandy for actually sitting through two bags of fluid with me.  Thank you to some people from John's school (I'm not sure who...), Abby, Katy, and Stephanie for some awesome meals.  And a huge thank you to my bff Jenise who actually came over to help me clean (Ok, she did most of it while I layed on the couch and cried on John.  But I helped some!).  Not only did she do it, but she expressed LOVING it the whole time!  (She's kinda a freak like that.  Of course, one of her reasons for loving it was she loved being able to actually see such a difference while doing it.  It gave her a sense of accomplishment.  It game me a sense of shame.  Haha!)

Feeling great today!!! And exciting news!!

I am feeling so great today!  I am NOT going to do what I did last time I felt great, which was run a ton of errands and help clean the whole house.  That caused a tanking of massive proportions from that day till today.  I'm not sure what I'll do with this new found energy.   Hopefully something productive while still relaxing.  (working on my Italian?  Binding a book?  Making some cards? ie: something productive but relaxing)

This has been a long time coming.  I've been in bed most everyday for most of the day hardly able to get up.  (But not nauseous!) I've had a gnarly sinus infection that made the whole right half of my face hurt, including my teeth (not fun).  But today!  Oh blessed today!  I woke up feeling pretty good!  AND!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (here is my big news that I'm so excited about)

One of my good friends, Rachel from Santa Barbara, texted me to see how I was doing.  We chatted for a while, and then suddenly she had an idea.  "Hillary!!  I'm going to New York to celebrate my 30th birthday from May 22-29!  All free lodging Hilton, Waldors Astoria, and Millenium Hilton!  Wanna? Wanna?!!"  Holy Cow!!!  Yes!!  Yes I would love to go to New York City with you and stay in a bunch of fancy hotels for free!!  (Just the hotels free.  Not the whole trip free).  It can't come at a better time!  That will be right at 2 months post chemo (so I should be back on my feet, I think?)  And her birthday and mine are 1 day apart (She's June 1 and I'm June 2) So it will be like a trip for BOTH of our birthdays!!  And it'll either fall on the week that John'll be gone for his high school senior trip, or it'll just give him a whole week to really work on his comps that he'll be taking at the beginning of June.

I am so excited!  This really gives me something to look forward to, and something to plan.  We are even going to see if we can get some SNL tickets!!!

OK!  I'm off to research all the possibilities!

(By the way, this is me looking REALLY excited!!)

Thank you

To all of you who prayed for me after I expressed on Sunday that my port was hurting pretty bad, I thank you.  I felt your prayers.  I was really uncomfortable and unable to move my arm on Sunday.  I put out the word, and Monday I woke up, and suddenly could move my arm!  It was still a little uncomfortable, but it healed more overnight than it had the previous 4 days combined!

In more ways than that, I feel very blessed.  My family is so amazing in how they have all rallied around me to let me know that I am not alone, and will not have to go through this alone.  My church has offered food, house cleaning, rides, anything I or John might need throughout all of this.  I have friends that have offered me their blood.  Their blood!  I have received so much support from people I don't even know, and I want you to know that every email, every voicemail, comment on facebook or here, it makes me smile and it makes me feel very loved and supported.  My head is still swimming, so I rarely even get to respond to them, but they are received and I tuck them away inside for the bad days when I feel awful.

I do though; I feel blessed.  I feel blessed that even though the cancer was so much bigger than a regular adenocarcinoma, it hadn't spread yet.  I feel blessed because my work is so willing to rearrange schedule after schedule to accommodate me and my health.  I feel blessed that, although the "power port" was not fun to install, it will keep me from having to get IV's every week.  And lastly, and least importantly I feel blessed that the lady at CVS gave me the least painful (flu) shot that I have ever had in my life.  In and out, no pain.  Ha!  It really is the little things (and I was just really tired of being stuck, so it was a stupid little blessing, but a huge blessing at the same time).

It's funny how sometimes it takes a really sucky situation to make you more thankful than you were before.  Even before all this happened, that is one area that I knew I needed to improve on.  (just ask John!)  I am by nature a problem solver, which can be a great thing.  The unseen evil that goes along with that is that you see every little problem.  (After all, how could a problem solver fix problems unless they can see them?) It is nice to have something big that eclipses all the other little annoyances for a change.  So that is already one thing I feel like I will be taking away from this.  Again though, as I've told many of you, I expect that my attitude will completely change once chemo starts and I feel like vomiting constantly.  But that is where the rubber meets the road I guess.  These few weeks before chemo, these are the "learning lesson" times.  The days after chemo, those are the "practicing the lesson" times.  Ewwww.  Not fun.  Necessary, but not fun.  I apologize in advance.  Please remember me like this when I becoming the sniveling whiney machine.